Very good. Hello, a very warm welcome here from Wolfsburg, out of our Studio 35. Looks very familiar to most of you who follow us very frequently. A very warm welcome to our eighth sustainability conference, with the dedicated purpose, giving insights in our ESG strategy. We have a very interesting lineup of speakers today. We will start with a very well-known face, Dirk Voeste, who will give us an update on the regenerate+ strategy. That will be followed by a presentation held by Guido Eickenroth, who will tell us about how sustainability and our overall business model go hand in hand when it comes to making the Volkswagen system a little bit more sustainable. We have a deep dive session, which is presented by Andreas Walingen, and it is all about circular economy. He will present our latest and greatest on that topic. We will finish the presentation today with a brief wrap-up on where we stand on our green issuance bond framework, followed by certain deep dive also into our Raw Materials Report 2025. How is PowerCo handling the raw material risk in their procurement processes? Last topic will then be an update on our most relevant ESG topics within Volkswagen Group, what has changed over the last 12 months. Before I hand it over to Dirk, I have to bore you, unfortunately, with a disclaimer. Please read it carefully. All forward-looking statements and the safe harbor language and other cautionary statement on the slide will govern today's presentation. As I said, I encourage you to read it because I will not read it for you in the interest of time and not to bore you to death. With that, I welcome Dirk here on stage to give us an update on regenerate+. Very good to see you, Dirk. Thanks a lot. Good to see you. The clicker. Thank you. Please go ahead. Hello, thank you, warm welcome from my side as well. Thanks for joining us for an update on regenerate+, our sustainability strategy. With this said, it has a subtitle for this year, Moving What Matters. To really look, in the next half hour, we will look into the details which we believe are really mattering, which we are driving, and which we are taking care of. Before that, again, let's have a short view on sustainability. Currently, in the times we are receiving quite a lot of questions, is sustainability still relevant? Is it really embedded into our strategy? Are those targets really met? Where are we on sustainability? Not only for Volkswagen Group, but also certainly for other entities and firms and companies around this world. Let me firmly state, sustainability will not go away. We're already seeing it looking at climate change and others. It is driving business, it's driving business impact, opportunities, and challenges. It won't go away. Super important in sustainability is that opportunities and challenges are balancing out. For us, and I think we are strongly confirm this one, is we are standing on the right side of the balance. Certainly, and I think Guido and Andreas will later talk about circular economy, sustainability is a business driver. Circular economy, you will see it as a prime example, how we're combining nature topics, people, society, together with business topics and really driving also future business profit pools in this end. With this said, you may recall our vision. Again here, firmly restating our vision, becoming a nature and society positive mobility provider. This is our vision. This is our aim. Of course, we know it will be difficult, but we still are very much of the opinion and very clear we need to start a touch again, be it with circular economy, but certainly also with the initiatives we are driving on the societal aspect. Our regenerate+ strategy is built on four dimensions. Normally, you would see three dimensions in sustainability, but with around 670,000 people around the world, it is very important that our people have a face, have a name, and also embedded in our holistic approach in sustainability. We have four dimensions, nature, our people, society, and business. Within those four dimensions, you know, and you will see later on, we have each three KPIs where we are measuring our success, where we are looking at our strategy and the implementation success. We have integrated regenerate+ into our group strategy. It's a fundamental pillar of Volkswagen Group's group strategy and certainly a strong commitment and strategy and a framework for the group and the respective brands. Those are the 12 KPIs, and in the next minutes, we will walk through the individual KPIs in nature, our people, and society. They are strict. We have numbers to it. You will see progress which we have achieved in 2025, so reporting on this one today, but you will also hear where we are stuck and what work we still have to do. Let's go deep by climate. Strong progress in our own facilities, 60% reduction of CO2 emissions in this end. We are above target. We set ourselves a target with 50%, but we're very much on track for our 2040 target to becoming net carbon neutral for our own production sites. We will talk about circular economy resources, but only as a glimpse. Here is an ambition level for 2040, and certainly what you will hear later on from Guido and from Andreas, where we already have recycled material in our vehicles. Where do we have it in our plants? What are we really doing? From my end, this will be my circular economy contribution, but there is much more to hear in the next presentations, and certainly about ecosystems. We are learning more and more the importance about nature, how nature is impacting our business, and how our businesses are impacting nature. We promise to have an indicator. We are still work on it, to be honest. It's not so easy. We are linked to, of course, the disclosure, we are linked to our reportings, we are linked to the respective initiatives, and we will have an indicator on biodiversity by the end of the year. Next year, when we see each other again, or you see me more or less again, we will present the biodiversity indicator. What we could say is, and we'll come to this in a minute, we have still the biodiversity fund, so we're really pushing towards positivity and contributions to nature and our ecosystems. Talking about climate and climate change, and we all observe it, you know it from your assets, from the way how your assets are insured, are valued. Nature and climate go hand in hand, and we need to take care of. Certainly what we are seeing here is we are still committed to our ambition by 2050 to become net carbon neutral. You're seeing that we are certified with SBTi, until 2030. With the current discussion with the SBTi, we are still waiting for the final standard to be issued in the automotive and mobility sector. We are also in very good discussions, intensive discussions with SBTi because as you probably know, they are also currently restructuring themselves, and they're looking at their respective offers. We are confident that we will work on this pathway until 2030, let's say certified, we talked about 2040 already, and when we talk later about our electromobility successes and the ramp up, you will see that we're also on track for the decarbonization pathway. Some more details. You'll find all the details when you look it up, either in the ESG Fact book or if you see on our web pages, you see the progress report. You will find all the data and presentations in there as well. Within our own asset Scope 1 and 2, we are significantly above target. When we look at Scope 3, the use phase, we are on track for 2030, roughly nearly 18%, by 2025, aiming for 30% in 2030. Ecosystems we talked about, we have the biodiversity fund, we have initiatives within our own assets. We have initiatives along our supply chain, where we are strongly working with our suppliers to improve their environmental footprint, also particularly the nature footprint. Of course, we are close to launch our biodiversity fund, within the next weeks. Then please follow up on this one as well. It's not only the larger things which we're driving. Here is an example, from this spring where we had volunteer days of tree planting. Certainly you could say tree planting is not the most creative one, but it's an important tool. Why is it an important tool? It combines values to society. It combines value to nature together with our people. So it is strongly bringing the topic of nature to our people. It's engaging. You saw that we have more than 100 employees only with this one initiative here, very close by to Wolfsburg, a great success, explaining about the nature, explaining about our business model, and certainly bring people together currently in these dynamic times. Super important. Those initiatives are going all over the globe. It is not only Wolfsburg, it is not only Germany, it is South Africa, it is China, it is U.S., it is Brazil and all over the world, which I think is really, let's say, where you see sustainability is more and more getting embedded into our own company. When you talk our people, we'll talk a little bit about the targets on the right side, women and international management. Training of our employees is very important. You see we had 21 on average, 21.6% of training hours per employee, really bring them from an analog into a digital world and maybe even further on into an AI world, and certainly from a combustion engine into an electromobility world. I think that we need to take our people along. We've given them the targets. We're giving them the opportunities, even in these dynamic times, to train themselves to really be and have the capacities to join with us on the transformation on this one. Accident frequency is still high. We are aiming for below one. We have implemented certain measures, and I would like to give you one measure on the next slide. You will see it on the lower part. It is the so-called healthcare run. Here's a picture of 2025. The recent healthcare one took place last weekend. More than two and a half thousand people, including families. Here again, the societal aspect took care, promoting health, putting it, making and bringing activities together, and really not only forming the unity and the team, but also promoting what can be done with health, be it at their own stage by healthcare, but also certainly within the company and ourselves. Very important topic. On the left-hand side, you see the diversity index. You see, with portion of women in management, we are on track to our 2028 target by roughly being 23.3%. On the right side, you see our target is 28.1% degree of international relation in top management. We are above target, and you may ask the question, why is our target below what we have already achieved? Please keep in mind, we are currently going through some also significant restructuring, where we believe this 28.1 is an ambitious target, which we want to achieve by 2028. If we see that we are really on track, certainly, we will revisit the target. Society. On society, it is on one side, what we do with society, with neighborhood and engagement, but it also includes our supply chain, our value chain. Here you see that roughly 87% have a positive performance. Our relevant Tier 1 suppliers have a positive performance in the S-Rating. We are shooting for 95%, knowing with roughly 60,000 Tier 1 suppliers, that there is a yearly turnover and 100% cannot really be achieved. That's why we believe higher than 95% is approximately the 100% which we need to achieve. We will see it in a minute. You will also see again here the reputation KPI. I have a slide in a second, and certainly about the project worldwide. I indicated this already, more than 200 projects worldwide, roughly EUR 74 million in donations, and a sustainability impact fund with around EUR 20 million per year. This fund is dedicated to activities driven by our company, within the company, and with the society. There are interesting models in there. For example, long-term business opportunities and sustainability. There are efficient gains in it, but there are also societal engagement topics in there. Really, as we understand sustainability, very broad, holistic. Maybe let's make a short pause, and you may ask yourself the question: What is our definition on sustainability? Sustainability can be defined in various ways, coming from the very, let's say, dogmatic Brundtland definition into value creation definition. Sustainability also, in our way we're looking at it, is business continuity. How can we implement those initiatives, drive and KPIs that Volkswagen in the mid and long run is also a successful, profitable business? Sustainability is an underlying function of business continuity. That's why I think it is super important to see not only the investments we do in our own assets. We need to look at the investments and the work we do with our supply chain, with our stakeholders, and certainly also with society and societal impact. Let's dive deeper a little bit into the supply chain. We do the S-Rating for quite some years. We publish the data, and you see that we have continuously improved our rating, roughly 87% last year, with our target of being above 95%. We are really on track. Why is this S-Rating so important? It offers us the opportunity with our relevant Tier 1 suppliers to talk about where they're good at, where improvements are needed, and what we need to do. We really want and do work with our Tier 1 suppliers in driving topics towards an increased sustainability in their own asset, but also in the whole supply chain. The global reputation KPI. It's a KPI which you know from our report. Since 2017, we are reporting it. We have set up or revised the whole questionnaires. It is done with two universities, scientifically based, and we are coming with key questions: trust, likability, and recognition. Those three elements are building the reputation KPI. We are roughly at 89% globally, but you see on the lower part, it differs from country to country. For example, with Germany, around 81%, to Brazil to 96%. Mexico, of course, was a highlight of 100, and U.S. was a lagger of 73%. This data and the knowledge what individual stakeholders, media, customers, opinion makers, but also investors, analysts are giving us, it helps us to see where can we position ourselves better. It helps us to go back to our production, our technical development. How can we make our offer even better? Certainly, what is missing and what we should do. This is a super helpful tool for us to understand, how are we perceived, how is our reputation, but also data-driven, what should be improved in order to drive reputation and certainly our position. We talked about the societal impact, more than 200 global project. Here on the left-hand side, you see how it differs from region. It is really international. It is not a German topic. It is really broad in driving this topic, and on the right side, you see more details on the impact fund, up to EUR 25 million in the years of 2028, 2029. Last year, we funded 15 projects globally, we get started, and in 2026, we put it on hold, referring to our economic situation. We will apply, or new projects will be applied for next year, we'll keep on running again. Again, it restates our commitment to sustainability. It restates the board's commitment to sustainability. It also, and you can see it really as a prime example, we stay on track, we stay on target, but of course, we are also reflecting our economic situation. When you talk about business, how much money are we making with sustainability? We promised last year that we are coming with a KPI, and this year, it's the first time we will present it to you. It's our sustainable revenues, all revenues which we are doing with sustainable-Sales or in business fields. We'll come to this in a minute. We still have our investment, the Leitmotif Venture Capital Fund, with roughly $300 million investing into startups in the area of decarbonization and circular economy. Our BEV share, clear commitment to electromobility, and certainly, as Rolf has pointed out already in his initial speech, we will talk about green bonds. Here again, with our target of 50% total outstanding volumes through green bonds. Last year, in year 2025, 31.5% of those shares have been green bonds which have been issued. Let's dive deeper. You've seen and you know the last slides. Last year, the first time in Europe, more vehicles with an electric engine have been sold than combustion engines. ACEA, sorry, the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, have published the figures for the first quarter. 20% true BEVs, only 30% combustion engine cars, and the rest, plug-in hybrids and hybrids, have been sold in the first quarter in Europe, which means electromobility is making its way through. What we also know from our own data, once people have driven an electric vehicle, 80%-90% will stay. What we're really seeing, even the past, we have anticipated the ramp-up curve differently, we are now seeing it is really coming. We are coming with the ID.2 or the ID. Polo. You saw the recent announcement of the Raval. We are now coming with this Electric Urban Car Family. We are really, let's say, having the right product. We promised to be below EUR 25,000. We delivered on our promise, and we will also deliver on our promise with the ID. EVERY1, or it will be called most likely slightly different, in the next year with a car below EUR 20,000. That's coming. Sustainable revenues. What is a sustainable revenue? What we did and is we looked into our sales and 19.9% of our sales, roughly EUR 64 billion, are dedicated to sustainable revenues, which includes BEVs, PHEVs, and REEVs. It also includes mobility services or emergency vehicles, et cetera. What we did is, together with our council, I come to this topic in a minute. Together with our council, we reviewed a new methodology, which is based on EU taxonomy and other issued and published methodologies in order to describe sustainability sales to come up with a framework. The framework is published in the white paper. You will see the white paper. You can find the white paper either in the ESG fact book or on our webpage. Happy also to provide you with further details if you wish. Come up with a 4-tier segmentation, how we are looking at our sales with transformers, enablers, and certainly, true sustainability sales and their overarching merge into 19.9%. We don't have a target or ambition level yet. It's the first time we have come with this number to present you roughly 20% of our sales are sustainable or counting to sustainable. Certainly, within the next year, we will come with an different ambition level. Very important, this paper has been published. It's available. It has been vetted with our Sustainability Council, with experts in the field. We feel it's a very strong and robust methodology, which is appreciated. We're getting very, very positive feedback on this methodology. Again, a very clear commitment from our end to be transparent and driving our business towards increased, let's say, level of sustainability. Certainly, I think when you talk about a strategy, it's a question how you implement it. Where do you create value? In the next minutes, I will focus on two aspects, ESG and stakeholder engagement. Of course, we talk about value creation, impact, and maybe there will be further questions from your end. Happy to answer them in the Q&A session. The ESG ratings. We still stick to our three major ESG raters: MSCI, Sustainalytics, and ISS. You see our trajectory from 2020 until 2025. The trend where we're seeing improve the rating, keeping the level on the MSCI level. Sustainalytics, yes, we are doing good. On the trend, we are even improving. Here again, we believe a little bit more can be done. Certainly, with ISS, we want and will maintain the prime status. Overall, I think very realistic picture reflecting our ambition. Very solid with tick in improvement as well. You also know the discussions around the raters, the rating agencies, and the respective questions around it. Our Group Sustainability Council. You see here quite a number of people. Why? It is because it is different than what you normally know as a council. Normally, councils are set up to counsel and advise the board of directors, smaller group, very often very close by. Very often it is very difficult that those discussions trickle down in an organization. In our case, our board is strongly committed to sustainability. They don't need the extra advice in talking about the importance of sustainability. We are much more looking into an area, how can we utilize those expert levels in driving projects and improving our strategy. That's why we have, we call it Sustainability Practice Groups. They're helping us to advise on strategic frames. They give us external expertise, honest feedback, business value because they are trusted experts and drive those topics. Certainly they increase the reputation and credibility. Let's see what they did in the last year. The full council, they are consisting out of four practice groups, of course, there's one practice group for Nature, one for Our People, one for Society, and one for Business. Each practice group, you see there, has three external experts and three internal experts. The discussion already happens on expert level on the topic. There is an immediate feedback on projects, questions, strategies, and it doesn't need to trickle down from the board of directors. We're really having the expertise where we really need it. You see here what in the last years have been done. They advise us on our group strategy, we talked about mobility services, mega trends, but also they helped us on the reputation study, double materiality analysis, and as I mentioned, certainly also under reputation and the revenue KPI. The individual working groups worked on various topics. For example, Our People was the whole area of the participation, international messaging, but also on our HR strategy in itself. When you look at across practice groups, it was about CO2 emission, the regulations, it was about ecosystem services. It was circular economy, very, very strong because circular economy goes beyond all four dimensions and Guido and Andreas will talk about it in more detail. They advised us and challenged us on our decarbonization strategy. Very, very broad overall. Certainly we used individual experts, and their opinion on specific questions. Here you see the numbers of the external as well as the internal experts. You see here Rebekka Freund from the World Wildlife Fund, or you see on the right side William Todts from Transport & Environment, Maja Göpel, known from a German aspect, or Aron Cramer, CEO of BSR. Very broad expertises on this field. Again, it's a completely new setup. We have two face-to-face meeting every year. I would say rather monthly meetings within the respective teams. Very, let's say, interactive, very engaging. What we are getting out of it is a lot of impulses, a lot of challenges, and very, very important, very detailed topics, very detailed expertises on the respective projects, which we can then use and really drive our projects forward. A new way of sustainable council and again, a systematic approach how we're implementing our strategy, regenerate+ with our vision and our four dimensions, again you will see it here again, very consistent how we implement and translate our strategy into our real world. Again, for the third year, we had our group sustainability forum, around 100 participations, there are 60% external, 60% entities of the group worldwide and roughly 30% of internals. Engaging panel discussions, very open dialogues on topics on circular economy. AI is a big topic, of course, of this day, certainly we use this opportunity this time to also invite my DAX 40 colleagues, we had a CSO meeting at the spot on top of it. Volkswagen is really positioned not only in a content provider, but also engaging with society, engaging with experts, really getting external knowhow into our own strategy, questioning our own position, questioning our strategy, improving our strategy and making it really robust. You see here again, super positive feedback from all participants, very, very active social media accounts around it. Wonderful speakers, provocative speakers as well, would really make a difference. You see it again a little bit like Mr. James Bond. The forum will return in spring 2027 because it is a format and it also shows our commitment to sustainability and engagement with society. A few last slides and coming to the end of the presentation, just to remind you, yes, we have the sustainability report, our ESG fact book, which I am sure you all know. It has been updated, I think two days ago? One day ago. Thanks. One day ago. With the latest figures. You will see the white paper. You see the revenue figures in there. They are all in there. Certainly when you want to read more about the individual figures I talked about, they are in the progress report. Rounding it up, again, it is very, very important we talked about particularly in this uncertain dynamic times, we need to empower people and take them along with it. We need, from a business perspective, but also from a nature perspective, protect our resources. You will later on how circular economy will help us, particularly also to make us as a company and also as a region, much more sovereign and independent. We have regenerate with strong progress. We talk about climate change. Climate neutrality is achievable. We are on track. Circular economy is about it. It is about regeneration, but very, very important, it is about people and bring them together to shape our sustainable future together. Again, moving what matters. With this one, looking forward to your questions, to your comments and happy to answer them. Thank you, Dirk. Pleasure. Very insightful, as always. We are opening the Q&A session. We will have three of those. One is now and then the next one after Andreas and Guido's presentation, and then at the very end of the section. We have here the first one, coming in from Justin from Hermes. You mentioned SBTi. Could you confirm the plan for SBTi renewal as the current SBTi commitment expires in 2027? Yeah. To start with. Yeah. An easy one. Thanks. Highly appreciate it. Since more than two years, we are waiting for the final standard of SBTi, and there's always an intermediate coming. We are in discussion with SBTi, which I think also had a structural change, that there will be end of this year, there should be the final draft, which we are waiting for. Our commitment is to go further with the SBTi, but we're also looking left and right around the corner what other standards are also available in this regard. Let's see what the final standard will be, but certainly, let's say we're looking into a recertification commitment. However, it is strongly dependent how the final standard of SBTi will look like. What we are currently seeing is, and I had a discussion with the new CEO of SBTi, we are seeing a much more pragmatic and also business-oriented view. Thank you, Dirk. Sounds reasonable to me. First know actually what you commit before you commit to. Yeah. The next question here would be from Sarah Tafreschi. I hope I spell or pronounce the name correctly. Can you share where or how policy engagement shows up in the regenerate+ program? Yeah. It is not a column in itself, but when you look at, for example, our BEV ramp-up, when you look at circular economy, in all those topics, we are very engaged in policy engagements or with those policy and policy makers and governments. Be it, for example, we're looking at harmonization of the waste legislations. We are looking at product passes when you talk about circular economy. We are also looking at CBAM, ETS, and ETS2, where we're also engaging. Certainly, I think we're looking at fleet compliance of the various buckets we are in. If I can mention another example, biodiversity disclosure protocols. We are in those working groups either through associations and/or individually to see what we can do, not to ease it up, but to make it pragmatic and applicable in this regard. It fits into all the respective baskets. It is not a single column, but it's really content driven together with our advocacy colleagues around the world. Very good. Next question is, it's unfortunately anonymous. You present a Paris-aligned decarbonization strategy, yet delivery depends heavily on future BEV ramp-up, external factors like grid decarbonization and long data targets such as 2040, 2050 net neutrality. What gives you confidence this pathway is actually executable and not another case of front-loaded ambition with a back-loaded delivery risk? Next time we need to talk to anonymous, by the way, but that's a different topic. What gives me really the confidence is when I'm looking at our current portfolio and BEVs, which we bring on the market. The Electric Urban Car Family is one topic, broadly getting into it. When I'm looking at the ID.1, which will come 2027, 2028, a strong topic and a strong commitment. When I'm looking at the overall portfolio of, and you know this well, not only in Volkswagen, but in Audi, in Škoda, in China, what we are doing all over the world, the projects are now coming. That gives me a strong confidence. What also gives me confidence, when I'm looking at our own assets, we talked about this one, we are already above and before the standard. Those measures are really being implemented. Will it be an easy ride? No, it won't be an easy ride, but I think we're tackling it bit by bit, and we're confident that we're driving it in this way. I think I would 100% agree. You mentioned before, yeah, that the Electric Urban Car Family is starting to sell at EUR 25,000 and then the ID. EVERY1 next year at EUR 20,000. We can keep in mind, obviously, that there is currently subsidies paid across Europe. Yeah, take France, Germany, you can be eligible for subsidies of up to EUR 6,000. That would mean actually that you get an entry-level BEV car at Volkswagen quality already for less than EUR 20,000. Yeah. In particular, in a segment, yeah, which has been largely abandoned during the Corona pandemic situation, a zero entry-level segment and it was a segment which was almost 1.6 million units in size. Yeah, I think we made the mistake, to be fair, 2020, that we assumed a rather linear increase in battery electric vehicle penetration and with all innovation curves we have basically seen in the past, they're not moving linear, they're moving in certain ups and downs. Yeah, at least from today's perspective, we can say by all what we know, we are really moving in the right direction and this holds then also true for our sustainable revenues. Absolutely. You see it also, we see, just giving you a little bit more attention for Andreas Walingen and Guido Eickenroth, circular economy plays into decarbonization because the circular material has less carbon footprint. You see more and more initiatives are really, let's say, paying into the same direction. We are confident that we'll make it, but certainly, I think it won't be an easy ride, but I think ready to take it. Very good, Dirk Voeste. There is no further question. There is plenty of time to think over your questions. As said, this session runs until 5:00 P.M. in the evening, we will have several Q&A rounds where you can address additional questions. For now, I would like to thank you again. Thank you. Pleasure. We will see you later on. See you later. Yeah, exactly. I take my glass and see you later. That's good. The next speaker, I'm very glad to introduce you. We always want to have a changeover in all the experts we have in Volkswagen Group to provide you always with an updated and also fresh angle of the sustainability efforts we are having in Volkswagen. It's my great pleasure to have today Guido Eickenroth. He is Head of Volkswagen Group Sustainability Strategy and Decarbonization, he will tell you why circular economy matters and what our strategy is on circular economy. Guido. Thank you very much. Very good to have you. Thank you. Okay. Also welcome from my side. I try to make also some new points, and Dirk already point out a lot of topics regarding circular economy and the activities. No, that is the wrong slide. Okay. Okay, here we are. Let's talk about also from Dirk mentioned the challenges and opportunities when we talk also about circular economy, because we see really this is a kind of a huge driver also for our business options and alternatives that we also see in the area of sustainability and circular economy. When we go through the slide and then we see here on the left side, increased resilience. Resilience is quite often in discussion at the moment, but also, yes, from the raw material side, virgin material side, to be more independent, be more resilient, what is happening also in the raw material markets. Also when it comes to circularity, it is getting more and more important because we see also the increasing demand on circular materials, and we need to be sure that we have the right volumes and the right quality also for these recyclates in the market and also available for our products. Therefore, it is getting more and more important. It is not only a buzzword anymore. On the other side, we have a lot of untapped profit pools. Then what I mean with that, when we talk about, for instance, special parts of circular economy, for instance, the used parts areas where we see really used parts that maybe have another life and have more options to be used again, have more potential also to be in the market. It is at the moment, also in 2023, was a EUR 100 billion market only in the European market. That's a massive demand and a lot of potential is there to use this more. On the other side, and this is exactly where the point sustainability and business comes together, is the acceleration on nature action. Because if we're using, and Dirk pointed already out that we have also less carbon footprint when we use, for instance, used parts and then other material and keep them longer in the life cycle. We have then the aspects on the profit side, but of course, on the nature side as well, because we save a lot of carbon footprint when we use these things in a different way. The uncertain legislation or the legislation topic itself, of course, it's important. There was also a short analysis from the Handelsblatt, last year, prepared that they ask also companies in the German market, and there was 80% of these companies was pushed circular economy actions by regulatory frameworks that they may be in place or will become in the next years. Should be definitely not the only push in a circular economy business. We should also focus on the other side because it's pretty much related, the legislation topic at the moment from the European perspective, but on the other side, and this indicates a little bit the market dimensions, we have also China. China have this not in the legislation at the moment, but they have it in a five-year plan implemented. That sees and indicates also how important is that from their side, not only fulfill legislation, also make business be more resilient and really have also sustainable business is also from the economic perspective, very important. When we look what we're doing now also in our current portfolio, and this is very important as well, because the only thing what we get in the next years back for recycling and other alternatives is that what we bring now in our cars. Here are some samples of our current portfolio, just some samples here with the ID.7, for instance, with a lot of recycled PET bottles in the interior material. That's very important because interior plastics are very sensitive from the consumer perspective as well. We have in our T-Roc, at the moment, the highest recyclate quota for polymers. We have up to 40 kg in that car. That's really a good step forward. Also on the Cupra side, we have also implemented and built in this car a lot of polymers. That is not a lighthouse. That is really bring it in the mass market of volume cars. That's the way forward, how we bring these polymers in our products, because when it's in our products, that's really going to happen. On the other side, we facing a lot of complexity. As OEM, and you see here the loop from the circular economy business, I will go through a little bit more in detail to that picture. On the upper side of this loop, you really can see the business, how we do it as today. It's a linear business. We're designing cars, we're producing cars, we're purchasing material as it is. We sell the cars, and then, of course, retreat them with spare parts and servicing a long time in the market lifetime. At a certain time point, the lifetime is over of this vehicle, and then it's really out of our focus at the moment. That will change dramatically when we talk about circular economy business, and then really kicks the lower part in to make the business really circular. Circular is one very important gate point you see here on a green circle. It's take back and buyback, because this is a decision point where really circular economy starts. We need to evaluate what we should do with the car, what should we do with the materials inside. Do we give them a second life in terms of using that parts? When we talk about electric cars, bring them, these batteries, a second life in the market, in the energy storage or anything else. We have a lot of more possibilities and options to really think about the material use of these vehicles. It come into a lower part where we really get the cars back and have maybe used the material, and we have a real end of life of the vehicle. We use the materials for circular materials and recycling activities. At the end, we have a strong focus on strengthen the values, have really the synergies in our company, and that is the point where circular economy is very important because it's scaling business. We talk about 10 brands in the group, and if we work all together, we have a huge network around the world, not only in Europe, around the world, a lot of dealers that we also need all incorporate in this kind of process. On the other side, we really focused on costs. Not make things on different perspective twice, really focused on that structure, how we organize circular economy business, and I will also come in a second to that. Also the partnerships activities is very important and very new to circular economy because it's a new orientation also in the market, but we'll also come in a second to that. When we come to the structure point that I mentioned, because circular economy business is not only recycling, because a lot of people think when we talk about circular economy, it's only using circular materials and then recycling, using PET bottles and so on, but it's much more. This is the point where really say, okay, from our company perspective, it's very important that we have all in the company with over 650,000 people around the world, we have a clear picture what is circular economy, what is behind. We have here our main blocks from the circular economy perspective coming from the production for sure, it's clear, but also the vehicle side, I mentioned that we bring with redesign and reduce and avoid also new aspects in our vehicle development and our production in that cars, but also think about revitalize programs and repair programs. Also talk about refuse. This is very difficult for an automotive company to talk about maybe to produce less. Not it's not less, produce it in a different way with a different purpose. Use it also more efficient, and we have here in sample where we have as MOIA also activities to have one vehicle that's used by much more people than only one or two person. This is all aspects of circular economy. Battery side, I just mentioned that will also change. Dirk also said that we have a clear indication in which direction e-mobility will go also within the next years. It's important for reducing also our footprint from the use phase, but battery plays an dramatic role when it comes to CO2 footprint from the supply chain. It starts with a huge footprint. We have with circular economy, huge potential to reduce this footprint also of the battery. That will be the game changer also for the future. Parts, I addressed already the topic that we have a huge demand here and potential in the market. What we should not forget is digitalization and people, because without digitalization and digital product passports and then also AI solutions in market evaluation and volume evaluation for recycled materials and so on, will not work without digitalization. If we do not change the mindset of our people, coming back to our strategy regenerate+, our internal people, how we treat, how we handle the usage of our materials, of our cars as well, but also the external. We need to do a lot of education. What is really behind circular economy. Therefore, it's very important to get also the company, when we talk about people, the whole company behind this picture with all the brands all over the world, say, Okay, this is the frame set. We have the same understanding about this. This is the way how we can incorporate this. That brings me exactly to the next page, how we framed our circular economy strategy. Making circularity the new normal in mobility, it's a claim where we really see it must be in our product, must be in our core processes, must be in our heart and our genius, that we have it in our company fully established, because only then it will work. This shows then also the indication when we use the full power of circular economy, if we use the whole volume, the whole network, all the people behind that topic. Of course, new business model sounds that easy. It's also a lot of development work to get new ways established, how to use things in a different way, break also processes, creating new processes, integrate all our strategies and our corporate strategy, bring them in there. It's a core potential. Save resources, reducing costs, I mentioned already. Also strengthening innovation, I will give also in a second example where we start to doing that. Partnerships as well as the rest. The whole circle and the reduce and grow part that covers the circular economy strategy need to be valued for over 1 million cars that we get back through this cycle. When we talk in the end of next decade, this is the volume that we at least need only fulfill the polymer quotas for the European markets. We see there's a huge potential behind, on one side from the parts side, but all the other business activities, but also to ensure our future business. What is new in the market situation? We have different partners now. That changes. We have close contact to waste and disposal companies and recyclers. Of course, we know them, that they're all in the market, and we work somehow together, but the collaboration in that situation is completely different. We need really to work much, much closer to see what kind of material we build today in our cars, what comes in next 10, 15, 20 years back in the market, how we are going to recycle this material, and then use this also for our new car. That will be a huge challenge, and we also say circular economy will not work alone. It's not our own thing. That's economy. It's a global thing, with all partners in the market. The communication and how we work together is not a circle, not circular economy, circular communication. It's really a network. It's a new ecosystem, what is established. Therefore, I will also give some samples how we as a Volkswagen Group start to establish this kind of new way of communication. We have here only some samples because we do a lot of things in the circular economy area. When we go through this line from Volkswagen, where we have vehicle recycling, take-back dismantling, using used parts activities, and this is really how we're going to practice, and Andreas will also tell us in a second much, much more details how we start these activities also with, here stated, our group of competence center for circular economy. Also we have these kind of small branches with startups working together. Porsche has a very great startup collaboration with a small battery recycler, Cylib, in Aachen. They really work close together how to optimize the processes, how really get the material back in the series, and this is very important. Also, of course, we have the battery recycling technology from the PowerCo and Audi has also project running over the whole value from circular economy perspective. This is what we are doing. We are definitely at the beginning. I want to close my presentation with some statements, and these are very important, also to summarize a little bit what I have talked with in the last minutes. Strengthening resilience and sustainability is key opportunity for circular economy. Be more independent, be more sustainable, that is the purpose also behind. Circular business model open new and lasting profit pools for the Volkswagen Group is really using material more efficient and also have our used parts business, for instance, implemented using other lifetime models that we not have at the moment on the radar. Last but not least, our CE strategy and implementation pathway are key to leveraging the scale and our innovation in the business, and this is what I mean. We have a framework with our Reduce and Grow Strategy for circular economy that is working all over the Group and with all the brands together. Thank you for now. Andreas Walingen, please, stage is yours for going a bit more in detail. Thank you very much, Guido. Thank you, Guido, and welcome also from my side. I'm very happy to share some insights on how we are implementing the circular economy strategy. I think you just learned how important it is for our regenerate+ strategy and also for the framework Guido just set out, our Reduce and Grow Strategy. I would like to give an insight on how are we addressing this and make it very tangible that we come from a strategy point of view into the execution and how we implement circular economy in our business operations. To make it as tangible as possible, I give you some insights on how we are setting up a Group Circular Economy Hub, where we combine all the competencies we need for circular economy to scale it and bring it to the successful story for the whole Group, integrating all the good efforts we have at the brands. Before we started this Group activity at the Group Circular Economy Hub, we decided to take a look at the customers and at the profit pools. How can we use the R strategy Guido just outlined, how can we use them into business fields? This is exactly what we did here on the chart. You see, we have new cars where we produce them, we sell them. There's a European market for that, like 13 million-14 million cars on average. Of course, our redesign activities with used materials, recycled materials, are going to fill in there. On the other hand side, we widen our scope onto a much broader perspective, where we see there's a huge car park in Europe. For example, over 300 million cars are on the road, and they're getting older and they're looking for repairment and parts. We see repairment and refurbishment for younger cars and also for reused and remanufactured parts. There's a huge potential in the market as there's a huge car park in line. We see, of course, there's also a number of end-of-life vehicles, roughly 4 million-6 million cars are scrapped in Europe, to recycle them, to get the materials and bring them back into the loop in order to secure them. This is how we address the R strategy to business fields. In this setup, we set up the Circular Economy Hub in order to really learn and scale the activities here. For us, it's very important that we start on operating level, so that we get as fast as possible in doing things and implementing things. After a short test phase last year, we are right in the middle of preparation. We are actively dismantling cars at Zwickau plant already in order to learn and prepare to scale. In 2027, we want to really go on a bigger number in order to process cars, get the materials, get the used parts, and get the business going. In order to give you an idea of what is our vision to this Circular Economy Hub, I will show you a short video. All right. I think it shows a good view on how our vision is for a Group Circular Economy Hub. We're right in the transformation phase, and we're working on it, and at the end of the year, we go live with this approach. We're happy that we're also supported by the Free State of Saxony because we see this as an industry approach where politics, regulatory frameworks, and industry partners work together. This is very important to set up an ecosystem where circular economy takes off and scales successfully. That's why I think it's an important sign that also we get support from our local governments. What is also very important, maybe the key to all that is our people. We need convinced and committed people. I talked to a lot of people before we installed this, and many said, Okay, it's not about so much technology, because we got very good ideas and engineers to do so, but it's very important to take the people to this idea, to get them committed and convinced that they're really working on this circular economy momentum we're building up. We have a dedicated information platform set up, so we have awareness and sensitivity workshops going on where we involve the people and our engineers and experience center to really get circular economy tangible for the people, and to get more qualification into this and bring new ideas to our operating model. Operating model is a good example to give you a very concrete number of what is our idea of scaling and material we like to gather in such a circular economy hub. We have a modular setup where we can raise capacity from step- to- step. The more we learn, the better we get, the more we automate. We set 4,000 cars at stage 1, 8,000, 15,000 cars. We ramp it up, the better we get the business balanced and the more we get inside. To give you an idea of how much material and parts we process in such a hub, we've given you some numbers here to give some rough numbers. For example, we will receive at least 300 tons of qualified recycled polymer that will be implemented in new cars, for example. 3- 5,000 battery packs, so really a huge part of batteries we're receiving back. 450,000 used parts we could sell to our customers and offer them. 15,000 cars roughly assumed to 15,000 tons of scrap materials, basically steel and aluminum. That's very important for us to close the loop in steel and aluminum and not to forget about copper, for example, and also other raw materials. See that we're really bringing some materials in our cycle and also some parts and remanufactured parts to our customers. We combine the profits of the used parts together with the raw material resilience at one side. Of course, 15,000 is probably one of the biggest sites in Germany and quite a big site in Europe. For a size of the Volkswagen Group, we need scale. The success factor from our perspective, circular economy is scaling. To scale this, we will prepare for scaling in the 2030s, to set up an idea of a partner network where we implement those strategies and scale together with partner across Europe. To give you an idea of what do I mean by scaling on that and what do we need, I would take the example of the upcoming regulation that is currently discussed on the European level. We assume that it will take place in this year. It will be effective in 2032. Let me walk you through these numbers, sometimes rather complex. The regulation says use recycled materials. They start with polymers. The regulation says use 15% of post-consumer recyclates for your cars. Out of this 15%, you need 20% coming from, not your own, but from automotive cars. That means really to close an automotive loop. It is not industry scrap, it's really post-consumer scrap, and even further, it is automotive closed loop. Those 20%, for example, relate to roughly 10 kilograms per new car. That means in every new car we are building in 2032 going forward, we need 10 kg of recycled automotive closed loop. The regulation sees that it's going to scale up the volume that's going to be needed. They say 25% in the coming years. They're also thinking about aluminum and steel. It's just an example how this will impact the automotive industry, us, and also our partners. How do we get those automotive closed-loop materials? Take a look at the recycling cycle of cars. To make it very concrete, at the bottom you have an old car, like an old Volkswagen car, but could be any cars. Of course, they have on average less plastic than today's cars, but you get qualified recycled materials out of those old cars for roughly only 30 kg. Only 30 kg are really qualified to be used to our new cars in terms of quality, safety, and all standards we need. Those 30 kg relate to new parts we're designing together with our engineering team to bring them by circular design into our new cars. The numbers that relate to, given 30 kg on the one-hand side and 10 kg you need on the other, this reflects to an easy number of where you say you need one old car to get prepared for three new cars. This gives you an idea of how many cars we need to be processed throughout our system in order to meet those requirements and also to make our decarbonization strategy feasible. Polymers are the start, and we see aluminum and steel coming up. Talking about ELVs to be even more specific, where do those ELVs come from? We did an analysis on that. Those are public numbers based on 2023, but they don't change that much in the area. You see that in Europe, we have roughly 4 billion-5 billion ELVs processed in the European Union. You see also that they are distributed all over Europe. This means from a regional perspective, we need regional partners to process those ELVs, and they not necessarily have to be in Germany. Because in Germany, we have the specific situation that we are by far not really developed in this market. For example, I really take a close look at France at many times and talk to the colleagues there. They have processed roughly 1 million ELV cars per year. The legislation really supports them and they get used parts in there. It's almost 4 times as many cars processed in France than in Germany, given the same size of the market and the same maturity of the industry. There's potential in that, but it also means that we need a regional network because it doesn't make economically, ecologically, no sense to bring a car, an old car from Spain, for example, to Germany or from the eastern part of Europe to the southern part. It's got to be regional and ecologically. On the other hand side, it has to be a technology network. We have technologies well established, I think, for steel, aluminum, and copper. There's an existing infrastructure. It's pretty common for our industry and other industries to use scrap and for steel and aluminum. But we have to take into account those decarbonization effects that we can leverage into our products and our decarbonization strategy. Battery is a total different game, and we still have to develop this game for batteries. As you're familiar, the battery industry is just setting up in Europe. Before we discuss a reverse take back from recycling for batteries, we also have to install the supply chain in Europe again. Otherwise, we're just processing the materials and ship them down to Asia or China. This can't be the idea for made in Europe or recycled in Europe. On polymers, to be quite open, it's very important that we get a cost priority. Otherwise, it's very difficult to process these polymers into our cars, and we have to find smart solution in circular design approaches to implement this into our new cars. What do I mean by that? This is where the loop is going to close, and this is why we need competencies here at the Group Circular Economy Hub we have at Zwickau. We really learn to dismantle the cars to increase the recycling efficiency, to bring the material back to our new parts and design them as good as possible into new approaches to bring them into our cars, so that on the other hand side, we increase our recycling efficiency when we bring back our cars to our system. This is really what we learn and set up and build up and scale at our Group Circularity Hub, where all the companies come together. It's set to be by far larger network once we learned and control the system in order to prepare for the 2030s going, to fill our overarching strategy from regenerate+, also the business logic we've seen that the reduce and grow strategy. To summarize it, to implement circular economy successfully at Volkswagen, our focus is to scale circular economy for the whole group with profitable circular business models to make it a circular business and secure raw material and improve our resilience based on the competencies we have and drive new innovations with new partners. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Andreas. Yep. Hand over. You stay in the middle. Thank you. I stay here. I think I've really learned two things, right? One would be, that sustainability and profitable business models can go hand in hand. The other thing, obviously, that in Europe, you need the regulation to push things forward- Yeah to bring it in the right direction, for that circular economy approach, but it's also highly complicated and takes a lot of effort, actually, in order to be successful. Jumping directly into the Q&A session, there is a couple of questions we have already lined up here, the first one goes to Guido. Guido, the question is, which concrete group-wide KPIs will define success for the circular economy strategy? Will you set clear interim targets, for instance, for 2030 to track our progress? Yeah, that's a good question regarding the KPIs and the measurement, how successful we are. I absolutely agree also that the KPIs and setting of the KPIs are absolutely relevant for steering and bringing the business in the right direction. From my perspective, we are working on that. We are defining that KPIs. There are, of course, as well as our competitors, some KPIs, circular revenues and circular material shares. There's usually the common KPIs that everyone knows. For us, it's much more important to have also a bit more detailed KPIs, not only to report them. Also, you saw the complexity of our structure and our company with all the brands behind, how really to steer also the activities that we have. Therefore, we have different KPIs that we are currently developing. As I mentioned, there will be one part more for the communication part, but one more really for hard steering, because circular material itself cannot be the one KPI for circular economy, as we see all the strategies behind much more regarding decarbonization, much more also, when it comes to profitability, we need to have much more focus also on that KPI, is really to steer the business in the right direction. For sure, we need to set also midterm targets for ourself. This is also what we're currently working on that, also with our new product lineup, because that will be very challenging also to bring it in the new product. Clear KPI set, we definitely will have in place. Thank you, Guido. The next question would be here directly a reaction to Andreas' presentation, where it says, Firstly, congratulations on getting ready to launch the Zwickau factory this year. Would you consider an investor tour of the facility? I would always be supportive, depending on if we get an invite. Is that something we could imagine? Honestly, we haven't thought about that yet. We're really deep into making it happen this year. We're just building on that. I'm very open to that. Let's discuss that and why not make it possible? It's not a secret something there. Give us this year that we really start up the operation that you can really see something going on. We should really take this as a good proposal. Yeah. Well then, we thank you already for the invite. We will pull together the interest, actually, from the investor community, and then we will find a date. We cannot promise. Look, we have summer break coming around the corner. I would be pretty sure that after the summer break, we can maybe find one or two spots where we can realize that. Thanks, Sarah, for that very positive feedback. Next question comes from Justin. I think the both of you can then decide whether who takes which part of the question. He says, Great to hear about the focus and activities in the circular economy, and there are a lot of projects. Do you have some overall group-level targets on what the company wants to achieve over time and assess how well it's doing? Well, it's a little bit going in the direction of the KPIs, Guido. Yeah. Maybe you start, and if Andreas has something to add. Exactly as you mentioned, it goes a bit in the direction of the KPIs, how we're really developing the KPIs and then what the KPIs really should indicate. Of course, it should indicate also certain progress that we have in our company regarding circular economy activities. Otherwise, it will be very difficult really to measure also the progress. Therefore, there will be a definitely yes, that we also have it then implemented. Also regarding on group level, for sure. We need to have then a kind of aggregation of the targets and have an overall ambition and a group target, having said that. In the end, the devil is in the detail. We need to have it really in a precise way to steer all of these different business entities. We talk about, for instance, Zwickau regarding getting the cars back, how much cars we get back need to be steered also by the purchasing department, how much raw material or how much recycled material we need in the cars. There are lots of, and various of KPIs that really need to good developed and then also then at the end, of course, can be communicated and should be also. As I know that Justin is always very active in engaging, Justin, you are super welcomed in order to share with us best practice in this regard. We would be very happy to see how others are tracking their circular economy efforts in order to see whether there is something actually we can adapt or amend, or basically think over ourselves. Absolutely That would be greatly appreciated. Yeah. Very good. The next one comes from Bruno Lapierre. Very good to see you also participating in our conference. How do you track the capital required to put in place this circular strategy and its return for the group? Will you communicate on the potential KPIs? Yeah. I think again, Guido. Again, me. Dirk presented also the beginning that we have our sustainable revenue KPIs now established. This is, from our perspective, exactly the direction it should go, so that we really bring this together and also have a indication not only internally for management, also for externally that you really see, have a kind of a feeling what we are doing and how successful we are doing that. Therefore, these KPIs are very important to that. As I mentioned, the sustainable revenue KPIs goes exactly in that direction, how we are going to push and make it also transparent to our externals. Yeah. I think given that we also report sustainable revenues, yes, you can be sure that the capital which is put there is to a certain extent tracked. Then I think you hinted to it, that we are looking at the profit pools and then obviously also how much we can earn in these profit pools would give us a certain angle on how to- Yeah report on these KPIs potentially then also in the future. There's plenty of questions. I'm reasonably thrilled. You really hit the point here. How are learnings from Zwickau being transferred to manufacturing sites in China, the U.S., Brazil, where Volkswagen has significant production but no equivalent infrastructure? Andreas. Yeah. Thank you for this question. This shows the potential, I think for the group We are really in exchange with all our plans and also with other regions. They have similar questions, how can we use used parts or remanufactured parts? How can we recycle material within our cars? We have a constant exchange there, and sometimes we learn from them. For example, China's also really dedicated to a circular economy strategy on their global level. There are also activities in Brazil, from a regulatory point of view, and we really exchange our knowledge and processes in order to get our knowledge and competitive advantage on the ground. It doesn't have to fit on a one-to-one approach we set up in Zwickau, for example, to transform it to Brazil. It always will be adapted to the local needs and local possibilities there. The ideas and the technologies and the approaches there, they can really learn from each other and there's a really good exchange on that. Thank you, Raphael, for that question. The next one would go, are you able to give an indication of what percentage of steel or aluminum would meet quality standards for reuse and end-of-life vehicles? This question comes from Paul Britton. Would you be able? I have something in mind, but I think it would be appropriate because that's really an engineering question. I would take it to my engineering colleagues and give you feedback on that, if that is sufficient. There's really quality standards from different perspectives and that's something should be adequately answered. Perfect. Andreas, we would then basically collect your feedback and would share it then with the group. Yes. Of course. That everyone can receive the answer. The last question on that section I see here on screen is coming from Justin again. He says, Automotive companies were fined by the EU and the U.K. for collusion on end-of-life recycling of vehicles. Is it clear how Volkswagen will avoid this kind of fine in future, while still working with competitors to facilitate recycling and reuse of competitor vehicles? I think it's absolutely clear that we have our compliance guidelines and our antitrust colleagues that are really supporting us whenever we talk to or are looking for partners that we're in line with those guidelines. This is why we have the standards for and why we get very good support from our legal advisors. Very good. Everything in place to make sure that we adhere and act compliant. Andreas and Guido, I really thank you very much. Very impressive presentation. No scripting. I think all of you might have seen it. That means actually that you are really in detail on your daily work. Thanks for the contributions. We will collect feedback here from the community, and we will share it afterwards. Thanks for now. Thank you very much. Hopefully see you again in the future. Perfect. We are very good on time. We will continue with the last part of today's presentations, and I have the pleasure actually to summarize some of our progress and advancements we have made on several topics. I would like to start with green finance, and the recent developments here. Dirk has presented it to you that it is one of our KPIs, part of the regenerate+. In 2025, we were even able to overfulfill already our 2050 target. We did about EUR 20 billion in bond issuances this year, and more than half of that was in the green format. For this year, and this is the latest we can share, and based on our May statistics which we have gathered, we will highly likely end up at higher than 40%. Track very well when you look at the long-term scheme on our target to achieve in by 2030, the higher than greater% share. You could now argue, well, it is not super ambitious if already by 2026 you meet the 2030 target level. Please bear in mind, markets are not predictable. We have seen so many things, and therefore putting ourselves on a safe side. There is still a long way to go until we can meet the 2050 target and have 50% of all of our bonds being green format. What we are making very good progress, and it is, as you all know, based on the EU taxonomy framework. Moving over to a topic where I am not the true expert in, to be fair. Sustainability and supply chain, I just simply found it's worth because we put recently out our Raw Materials Report 2025, I can only recommend to you really to read it yourself. It's online, you find it on the webpage. Just wanted to give a brief summary because that's such a frequent topic we get asked about in our meetings that I think it's worthwhile to give you a little of a summary of what you would find in this report. This is not really to complain, but just to give you a little bit of feeling of the scope we are talking about when we talk about supply chain in Volkswagen. We have more than 63,000 direct suppliers. You can read in the Raw Materials Report, we could fill two times the Wolfsburg Stadium of our soccer club here. If you would invite one representative from each and every first-tier supplier, for all of those who have participated from London, it would be one times the Arsenal London soccer stadium you could fill with it, we would have to leave out about 2,500 people. They are coming from 93 different countries. Please bear in mind, we have in not all of our countries the same legal framework and regulatory frameworks, this needs to be taken into consideration. Last not least, the tier chain can be as long as 9. You heard it from Dirk, you heard it also from other colleagues, cooperation is here key, conversation and being really in frequent exchange in order to manage such a huge supply chain. All of our efforts in Volkswagen Group are based on one policy, the Responsible Raw Materials Policy. The Responsible Raw Materials Policy is again footed on the global normative guidelines, in particular, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the core labor standards according to ILO, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, as well as the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chain, last not least, the principles of the UN Global Compact. We thought that's the best picture in order to summarize the challenge the colleagues in the supply chain management are faced with. You just see the tip of the iceberg with the 63,000 suppliers. Of course, there are multiple challenges, most often, what we have to monitor very frequently, do our suppliers comply with our Business Partner Code of Conduct? How can we monitor insufficient adherence to the Group Responsible Sourcing Requirements? On the other hand side, when we go down to the end tiers, in part, there is lack of transparency about the end tier. Sometimes we don't get disclosure from the number nini in the tier because we just simply have no direct contract with those suppliers, they are part of the second tier or the third tier supply chain. When you think about that one single product chain can span more than eight tiers with several hundred suppliers supplying to one module, I think you can gauge the complexity of the whole topic actually we are facing with. Again, it's not about complaining, but it's just giving you an impression, actually, of how big the exercise is. What you definitely need in order to be capable to manage such a supply chain is a supply chain system, and you can see here how our supply chain system works. First, we have the risk analysis, and then obviously the measures. The risk analysis looks first at the business model of the suppliers, and then second at the individual supplier risk. Then we can apply our standard measures. First of all, the code of conduct for our business partners, the grievance mechanism, the media monitoring, which we frequently do in order to stay on top if there is something brought up concerning one of our suppliers. The sustainability rating, which Dirk has mentioned, where already 85% are certified. The S-Rating is in particular applied to those suppliers which we see in the high category risk. This is mandatory. We have the dedicated supplier training, obviously on those where we identify a higher risk. The deep dive is then in particular when there is a human rights focus. Last not least, we have the raw materials due diligence system, which is embedded in this responsible supply chain system, and where we will now take a closer look. Here you have first the risk analysis, second, the mitigation measures you can apply. Here, definitely, there are two alternatives on how to mitigate the measures. The one is obviously the direct engagement with the supplier, or the second solution could be that you have a cross-industry engagement process, where you can lobby for a certain solution. Last not least, then obviously the third step, evaluation and reporting. In line with the OECD and due diligence guidelines, we have established a working group and a senior-level steering committee. The working group actually feeds in ideas and process recommendations into the overall raw material due diligence cycle, while the senior-level steering committee oversees the work of. The workload is obviously if there is an external certificate available, so that the supplier could basically apply for the external certificate. Makes our life obviously much easier. That can be a compliant certificate with the RMAP, with the ASI or with LWG, which is in particular necessary when we think about leather usage in the vehicle. This would allow us to use databases in order not to do the work twice, and is obviously the most efficient one. However, there are certain situations where you can't use an external certificate or where the supplier engagement or supplier audit fails, and this is then where we have the supplier engagement program, where we then make a site visit. We have a frequent dialogue with the supplier in order to make sure that the supplier is adhering to all of the procedures we have in the group. When you look at the several audits which are currently available, you'll find this overview here also in the raw materials report. There is an audit standard currently for tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold, as well as for battery raw materials, midstream and upstream, for leather, as I've mentioned, aluminum, and then also for mica, which is largely used in coatings. You see the scope of the risk assessed in the audit, very detailed, and which standard actually we are looking at, and then at which level it is done, and take a comprehensive overview of how external audits can help us in order to run our supply chain risk cycle. Where there is opportunity, there is obviously also challenges and limits. I think we got a flavor actually from Andreas' presentation, how complicated EU regulation, which is obviously necessary to drive things, can make the situation for an OEM with more than 63,000 Tier 1 suppliers. The legislation is obviously one thing. You have the European Battery Directive as well as the European Deforestation Regulation, which is obviously a lot of documentation, adding a lot of operational complexity, and we are faced with certain implementation challenges when we apply this to the whole of our organization. The second one is resulting just simply from the supply chain complexity, where we have fragmented supply chains or where we have limited visibility in the upstream part of the supply chain because it sits so low in the tier that we are not in direct contact with the suppliers. Data constraints, wherever the supplier is not willing actually to exchange data, in particular from sub-suppliers. Other constraints, to be very open, there is also that with applying all these standards to the European OEMs, we are not reaching a level playing field. When you export a vehicle, for instance, currently from outside Europe to one respective market, be it the U.K., be it Germany or whatsoever, you don't have to adhere to the Deforestation Regulation. You obviously have also then certain savings by not doing all the documentation and having the operational complexity added, and that gives you obviously also an advantage when selling your vehicles. Role of governments, please don't forget about that. Of course, we would all act always in compliance, like to act in compliance. But in certain countries, when you think of the 93 countries where we are operating in, it's just simply that the governments themselves do not fully reinforce that anti-bribery laws or that the respective bodies are always adhering to the rules in place. Much to that. As said, it's the sixth Responsibility Raw Material Report we have published. It's available since March. We have done a dedicated review of 18 priority raw materials here. You'll find in-depth information about the scope and the methodology. You'll find at the very end of this presentation also useful links where you get to all the respective regulation or to our own in-house policies, where you can see actually how we try to deal with those topics. Whenever you see that world map logo here on the very bottom of the slide, that's a hyperlink guiding you directly to this responsible raw materials report. Another area where we are very frequently asked, actually, how do you deal in particular with the raw materials for your batteries? Here also on behalf of our PowerCo colleagues, we have gathered three slides, which are largely mirroring the part of this executive board clearance. There is also a detailed ESG due diligence done in order to make sure that whenever we are sourcing something or sourcing direct supply from a mine, that we can make sure that our standards and rules are put into place. What are we doing on PowerCo side? The idea is to vertically integrate parts of the supply chain, in particular on the mining side. We definitely need resources on the conversion and refining side, or also for cathode and anode materials. It's on one hand side to secure the volume which we need in order to build our battery electric vehicles. On the other hand side, to reduce the price volatility, which is very inherent when you think, for instance, of lithium. Lithium back in 2022 was as high as EUR 80,000 per tonne. Currently, we are more hovering around the EUR 20,000 per tonne, so it's quite a huge volatility. We can safeguard, in particular, in the early years, also on the hedging side, but hedging is all but nothing if you don't have the volumes you need in your factories in order to build the vehicles which you want to bring on the road. The focus today here is on the sustainable cell production. That's a process which is pretty similar, actually, to what you have now learned in this raw material supply chain system, which I've presented to you. You start here, obviously, with a procurement strategy, vertical integration, and then the levers to sustainable cell production, and this is embedded in a sustainability strategy, sustainability business, and also in the corporate decision-making. A very comprehensive approach, on the one or the other hand, bit more detailed than what you saw on the general procurement side, but by and large, mirroring the very well-known process we have on the raw material side. You see also here, when identifying risks and we see that a supplier cannot meet our strict ESG criteria, then we will not consider such suppliers as being our partners in the battery raw material place. That's easier said than done, because we all know certain raw materials, in particular in the battery electric vehicle area, they are largely sourced in countries where we know that we have particular problems in expecting that all standards we are known or used to here in Europe are 100% adhered to. But this is a clear commitment also from Volkswagen Group to be on the safe side with regards to raw material and battery sourcing. You see also the foundation. That's largely on international guidelines, the OECD, and the UN Global Compact. Of course, the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act as the RMAP standards. Pretty similar to what you have seen in the raw material report, so nothing new. Coming to the last section, which is admittedly on Volkswagen side, always a topic where I know you want to see things moving quicker. On the other hand side, we think actually that in particular over the last two, three years, we have already achieved a lot, and let's dive into details, actually, on where we think we have made progress. Since 2023, there are a lot of structural changes, and alter processes, very much driven by Oli Blume. It's about group steering, where the 2035 strategy has been implemented. We strengthen more and more the independency of the regions. On brand group level, the brand groups are strengthened. You have seen just recently that we cut almost half of the executive board mandates in brand group core, and take certain decisions, actually, to empower the regions, be it on the production level or be it on the delivery level. We have newly defined a software governance within Volkswagen. I think it's fair to claim that we are the only OEM currently being able to cater the Western Hemisphere with one solution and the Eastern Hemisphere with one solution. Eastern Hemisphere based on the XPeng architecture, which is developed into the China electrical architecture. For the Western Hemisphere, it's our Rivian tech joint venture, where we start with the first vehicle in 2027 will be the ID. EVERY1. From 2028, with the rollout of the SSP, that will definitely gain speed and volume, because on the SSP, until 2035, I think it's about 30 million vehicles which we are planning. Lean corporation, reducing complexity and reduced number of committees. A number to impress you with Audi. I think Audi has reduced 80% of its committees over the last 18 months. Clearly a huge step forward in order to make our decision-making faster. What have we achieved over the last 2 to 3 years? I think most often we hear our governance is slowing the organization down. We are not fast enough in our decision-making. Yes, to a certain extent, you always can get better, but when you think about the decisions which we have taken now over the last several years, and I don't know for everyone who was able to visit us in China just in April at our latest CMD, has seen what is possible when the whole organization is moving in one direction. The In China, for China strategy implemented just within three years after the strategy was initiated. We have been able to reduce raw material costs by more than 50%. We have been able to reduce our development times by 30%, and in April, we presented the first three new vehicles, which are coming now on road at very competitive pricing. More important, at very competitive tech features also for Chinese market, where you can really get a good feeling that if we can make it there, and if we are successful in one of the most competitive markets, we can also make it in Europe, and in other regions of the world. Battery ramp-up, we've briefly talked about it. Salzgitter is now up and running, a plant with about 20 GWh, and we are progressing here according to plan. With the launch now of the Electric Urban Car Family, we will also start to enroll the Electric Urban Car Family with LFP batteries, starting soon. ADAS Level 2+ and Level 2++ is already something which we offer in 2026 in China, and we will move on to Level 3 readiness by 2027, developing our own in-house chip production. When you think of December 2024, has not been seen that Volkswagen is taking out capacity over the last decades. We are reducing now capacity when we include our plant in Brussels by almost 1 million in Europe. The stringent cost execution can be witnessed on the quarterly basis when we report our results and where we highlight in particular this item in our EBIT bridge for automotive. No time to stand still. Why not? Since 2025, unfortunately, new challenges arose. That is on one hand side the tariffs, which are costing us EUR 5 billion on an annual basis. In 2026, we have new conflicts, the Iran conflict. We have an unexpected weakness of the Chinese market. I think the most pessimistic outlooks foresaw maybe the Chinese market in 2026 could be stagnant or down by as much as 10%. Now it is May, the market is almost down by 20%. That increases now the export pressure from China to, in particular, the European market. We see actually the success of the Chinese OEMs, in particular in the U.K., but also in other regions of Europe. This is why we have to step up again our transformation efforts. Oli Blume, our CEO, has highlighted it on the occasion of the Q1 results. You all know these eight action fields, where we are now working on and want to be ready by summer to decide together with the Supervisory Board which measures should be newly implemented. The target is to make Volkswagen more robust and even resilient. We are banking our new five-year plan on a no-growth scenario. When we are frank and currently take the economic outlook, it is currently difficult to get excited about the economic activity in Europe and also over the foreseeable future. We are already at a 25% market share, so it would be not recommended to think we can grow this market share in order to show growth in our overall numbers. Take the U.S., the tariffs have changed the situation for Volkswagen quite significantly. Even if we were to decide to localize additional capacity today, it would take a couple of years until this new capacity could come into play and help us to grow our business in the U.S. In China, we just talked about it. We have an ambitious target to move our volumes beyond 3 million vehicles by 2030. As you know, this is not in the consolidated revenues because most of the business we do in China is consolidated equity. Long and short, the target is not to grow, but to prepare for an environment where we likely will not see a lot of growth and adjust our cost base accordingly. This is why we have to take these steps and have to move on, in order also to stay successful in the future. Last slide. Coming to the changes in governance, and what we have achieved so far. I think you all have seen that we have been able to dissolve the dual role of Oli in January. We won a new expert for our Supervisory Board, Susanne Wiegand, who is also running the Audit Committee, a truly independent person and female. The board gender diversity increased now even to 45%. Recently read a statistic that the average in the DAX is currently at around 40. Here, I think Volkswagen is really in a very good position. New governance structure at brand group core, I've mentioned it, that we cut the number of executive board members almost in half in order to get faster, leaner and have faster decision-making. Just in April, where Oli announced that he bundles development, procurement, production, sales, and quality on his level in order to move things forward in a faster way. Yes, we always can be better, fully agreed. We are definitely looking forward for your feedback and your input in order to get new impulses, and to move things forward. I think we can also be proud on what we have achieved, and what we have driven over the last couple of years. With that, I come to an end. Look forward very much to your questions. Because I said I'm not the super expert in each and every detail, I need some support, and this is why I have asked Dirk again here on stage in order to take the upcoming questions. Sure. Good to have you here again. Pleasure. We have already the first one, which is coming from Yasin Rashid, and I think it's a she. She asks, Do you have appetite for green hybrid following the upcoming 2027 call date on one of your conventional hybrids? Hybrid bonds, yeah. It's the green financing. Well, Yasin, thank you very much for that question. Can only state we have our last hybrid bond we did was in green format. Yes, we definitely plan to do further issuances, following issuances in our hybrid bond portfolio in the green format. Yeah, we'll look out for a spot and behave a bit opportunistic actually on the timing, as they are an integral part of our financing structure. As you can imagine, we also want to manage our hybrid bond portfolio very carefully. Thanks for that one. Same question or same author. The next one, would you like to take it? I can take it, I think- Yeah cybersecurity and Yasin Rashid again. Cybersecurity had a material impact on some auto companies, in brackets Jaguar. I'm keen to know what Volkswagen is doing to safeguard its resilience against potential cyber attacks. I think last year we had a- Exactly similar occasion. Yeah. The expert here talking about all the details we are setting up to really make sure that we are really safeguarding and ring-fencing our activities, be it in our own plants, but also be it in our cars as well. Referring to maybe to the old presentation, not going into too much of details, but I think there's enormous amount of activities around it to make sure that we mitigate as best as we can our, let's say, cyber attacks. I think you would never can avoid it, but looking at the efforts we're doing, it's significant. Yeah. Maybe as a hint, Yasin, there is obviously on our website, when you look at the ESG Conference 2025- Yeah We had a dedicated topic on cybersecurity from one of our IT colleagues, a comprehensive presentation on that. I would refer you to this one. If there are any open questions, then we are more than happy actually if you contact either Ulrich or Thomas in the Wolfsburg office, and they will be happy to help you on any further follow-ups. Next question here is coming from Justin. I note, in 2025 Factbook, it is reported that Volkswagen has about 21,000 suppliers completed an SAQ, and Volkswagen carried out 180 on-site audits. This seems very low for such large group with so many Tier 1 suppliers. How do you assess whether 180 audits and 21,000 SAQs is sufficient to ensure supplier compliance and for good governance? That's a very good one, because I pointed to the 63. Look, I think it's fair to say that the number of on-site audits we did, I told you that we also have the opportunity, obviously, for the certification. If the supplier voluntarily applies for an external audit and says then, Look, I'm already certified by RMA by- Yeah, by whatever standard you would like to have, which is valid actually for my industry, then this would be enough for us, because the certification is obviously done by externals, and we would then rely on the outcome of this certificate. This might also explain why the number which looks here so low at first glance is maybe much better actually than you would guess, I hope. If there is a follow-up, Justin, then please contact us and we will further elaborate on that. Regarding the eight action fields, would the group be ready to communicate on new cost measures at time of Q2 reporting, or do you plan a specific event? That's a very good one, Bruno. We said we will be ready by summer. We didn't specify, actually, if it's early summer, midsummer, or late summer. If it would be early summer, we could imagine that something could already be communicated on the occasion of the H1 results. It's quite a complex and delicate topic, as you can guess. You might have read in the press, it was also positioned by Oli, we are talking about potential overcapacity of another 500,000 units in Europe, which might also affect additional employees. Therefore, the discussion is obviously not easy. To be fair, our aim shouldn't be here to be fast, but rather diligent, and then precise, not to irritate our people. You know that the 50,000 which are already agreed on, they are all leaving Volkswagen in a social responsible way. We have no forced redundancies in our group. I would say there is a certain chance that with the H1 results, we are able to disclose already first steps, but please do not be disappointed if the full release will then be done after the summer break. Yes, if so, we would definitely look then for a dedicated event. We are almost up on time, and I don't see any- No further questions additional question here. Perfect on timing, I would say. Dirk? Good. Up to you now to close the session. Yeah. Would leave me, actually, just to thank all the presenters we had today. I think we had a peak 120 participants. Super In the sustainability conference, which is a new record, and promises. It shows the interest. It's not all internals. Really, it just shows the rising interest, but also that we have something to tell, and something comprehensive to tell. Otherwise, I think you wouldn't take the time and dial in. Thank you for that huge interest. We would be super happy for all feedback, actually, which you have to us, because we want to improve. We want to move on. We might not deem every proposal as super We look at all proposals. We look at all, please do not be disappointed if we are not following each and every recommendation and request. With that Thanks for a lot of good questions. Thanks for the very vivid discussion, in particular on the section around circular economy. With that, thank you very much and see you next time. Speak soon.